Ideologies that strengthen themselves

The attachments to theories, points of view and dogmas are used to satisfy our need of certainty and to escape confrontation with the void. Often I ask myself how ideologies and dogmas can stand the test of time even though they are so often full of holes.

I noticed that among the various mechanisms commonly used, ideologies tend to implement auto-referential processes to defend themselves from criticisms, whereas the criticisms themselves strengthen the ideologies.

Strengthen today, strengthen tomorrow, and the day after that fundamentalisms are born.

The unending ego activity would do anything to preserve itself. The mind tends to define a unity between its scattered parts by constructing an ego and an identity with well defined traits. The mind protects itself from life’s impermanence and from our illusory personality, identifying itself with its own certainties. The ego unconsciously knows itself to be a construction without firm basis, merely created by concepts and internal self images; this fragility wants to be strengthened somehow.

The attachments to theories, points of view and dogmas are used to satisfy our need of certainty and to escape confrontation with the void. Therefore the human race has created ideologies and models that "put the world in order" and protect ourselves from the unknown, from our own doubts and from the anxiety of not-knowing.

Often I ask myself how ideologies and dogmas can stand the test of time even though they are so often full of holes. I noticed that among the various mechanisms commonly used, ideologies tend to implement auto-referential processes to defend themselves from criticisms, whereas the criticisms themselves strengthen the ideologies. Strengthen today, strengthen tomorrow, and the day after that fundamentalisms are born.

For instance, in religions, criticisms are considered to be a lack of faith or even influenced by the devil, strengthening in this way the validity of the dogma. If there is an evil force then its even more important to be on the good side.

Psychoanalysis created the mechanism of psychological resistance. If anybody doubts the validity of analysis, this is written off as a psychological resistance to the confrontations of analysis, so it validates the model even more.

Technology, though not constituting an ideology in the classical sense, is a thought form that reinforces itself with the ideas of progress and the achievement of a better life through its gadgets. Those who are against this are against progress and a better quality of life.

Communism defends its ideology against critics by regarding them as "enemies of the people, capitalists, imperialists", while capitalism defends itself against critics by considering them to be "enemies of freedom”, “communists” or even “terrorists". In both cases the existence of opposition, real or imagined, serves only to support ones own cause.

Critics of feminism can be regarded as chauvinists and misogynists, or having "problems with the feminine", strengthening the need for feminist ideas.

In religions and in ideologies, the mechanisms of conversion and conviction fortify the system. The more people are convinced, the more our doubts will be quelled. Probably there are many more "isms" and doctrines that use similar mechanisms that will be interesting to deconstruct.

Although the Heisenberg uncertainty principle has been demonstrated and the Gödel theorem tells us that a complex formal system can't be all-embracing, our attachments to ideas don’t die easily, because would bring with them the disaster of losing the sense of identity that we derive from our attachment to the various ideologies. Even faith that should be according to Alan Watts "first of all openness, an act of trust in the unknown" becomes a closed dogma that reduces the whole to a small thing.

The explanatory principle will save you from the fear of the unknown. I prefer the unknown. John Lilly

At the level of concepts and ideas, we focus on meanings, sometimes even looking for meanings behind meanings. This searching for meaning is like pursuing words through the dictionary – one word is explained by others words, which are explained by others, and so on. But a meaning is nothing in itself; it has value only in relation to other meanings. Moving from concept to concept, each created by the one before, is a chase which wastes time and energy. Seen in this way, meanings resemble samsara, a word implying the circular motion of a constantly turning wheel. We can never be free until we realize the ultimate uselessness of pursuing this cycle. When we see that we do not have to assign meanings to anything, when we allow things to be simply as they are, we discover in them their instrinsic nature. Tarthang Tulku. Openness Mind. Self-Knowledge and Inner Peace Through Meditation. Dharma Publishing. Berkeley. 1978